In Andrei Tarkovsky’s penultimate film Nostalghia (1983), which he co-wrote with Michelangelo Antonioni’s longtime collaborator Tonino Guerra, Russian writer Andrei (Oleg Ivanovič Jankovskij) travels to Italy in order to research the life of composer Pavel Sosnovsky, along with his interpreter Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano), a young woman who resembles the Madonna del Parto in the famous fresco by Piero della Francesca.
Ahead of the theatrical release of the new 4K restoration, now playing at NYC’s Film Forum, we had the opportunity to speak with Giuseppe Lanci, the Italian cinematographer who shot the film and oversaw this new restoration. The 81-year-old Lanci still teaches at the Csc (National School of Cinema of Rome). In his diaries, Tarkovsky mentioned watching Nostalghia with cinematographer Sven Nykvist: “The photography made a strong impression on Nykvist. Indeed, Peppe Lanci shot the film in an extraordinary manner. This Swedish copy is much better than the one shown at Cannes,...
Ahead of the theatrical release of the new 4K restoration, now playing at NYC’s Film Forum, we had the opportunity to speak with Giuseppe Lanci, the Italian cinematographer who shot the film and oversaw this new restoration. The 81-year-old Lanci still teaches at the Csc (National School of Cinema of Rome). In his diaries, Tarkovsky mentioned watching Nostalghia with cinematographer Sven Nykvist: “The photography made a strong impression on Nykvist. Indeed, Peppe Lanci shot the film in an extraordinary manner. This Swedish copy is much better than the one shown at Cannes,...
- 2/21/2024
- by Lucia Senesi
- The Film Stage
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to war we go. That's the primary emotion in this idealistic, warm but undeniably scattered story about a group of Italian university students who decide to lay down their books and fight the fascists during World War II -- that is, their own countrymen and the Germans. It's a curious offering, perhaps to demonstrate that all Italians were not on the wrong side in that titanic battle, but its dewy sensibility and atonal ruptures never fully involve us in the story line.
"The Little Teachers", the opening-night offering at the 10th annual Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival, met with the polite applause one expects from a gala crowd that is not exactly bowled over but wants to be appreciative nonetheless. Domestic distribution prospects look dim, unlike other Palm Springs opening-nighters such as "Cinema Paradiso" and "Enchanted April".
In this warm look at idealistic young men, director Daniele Luchetti's surest grasp is with the inherent comic aspects of a group of fresh-faced college boys deciding to take up arms and liberate Italy before Gen. Patton and his British counterparts roll into town. The group is led by square-jawed Gigi (Stefano Accorsi), who fancies the romantic aspects of going off to war, especially when the women wave their handkerchiefs and bat their eyes. The story strikes best in its droll sensibility as the filmmakers gently lampoon the idealism of the young, self-declared soldiers. Their idea of boot camp is not training for the rigors of hand-to-hand combat but debating the pros and cons of fascism and formulating intellectual constructs to justify their taking up arms.
These early preparation scenes are quite funny, a credit to the squadron of screenwriters (Luchetti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Domenico Starnone), but like the gaggle of schoolboy soldiers, the scripting seems a participatory democracy so unfocused and lacking in thematic substructure that the story digresses to a mountain-trek, travelogue level. In short, the narrative seems impaired by the same drawback the boy soldiers have -- no particular plan or focus. After a while, speechmaking by the scholarly soldiers, often callow and simplistic, wears thin, even in its comic dimensions.
In this post-"Saving Private Ryan" age, the battle scenes seem woefully stylized and, hence, false. Still, there's much to praise, especially Luchetti's warmly comic nurturing of the action. Unfortunately, he's leading his team in largely unmapped terrain thanks to the meandering script, and "The Little Teachers" ultimately grades as a minor disappointment despite atmospheric lensing from cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci. Indicative of the narrative's atonality, composer Dario Lucantoni's delightfully bouncy score rings true when the film is smiling at the boys' idealism but is intrusively upbeat during the battle sequences.
As the self-styled leader of the pack, Accorsi (with Stallone-like forehead and jaw) is a solid lead and well epitomizes the ambivalence of young men whose rhetoric outflanks their bravery.
THE LITTLE TEACHERS
Cecchi Gori Group
Producers: Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Rita Cecchi Gori
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Screenwriters: Daniele Luchetti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Domenico Starnone
Director of photography: Giuseppe Lanci
Editor: Patrizio Marone
Music: Dario Lucantoni
Color/stereo
Cast:
Gigi: Stefano Accorsi
Simonetta: Stefania Montorsi
Nello: Manuel Donato
Running time -- 122 minutes
No MPAA rating...
"The Little Teachers", the opening-night offering at the 10th annual Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival, met with the polite applause one expects from a gala crowd that is not exactly bowled over but wants to be appreciative nonetheless. Domestic distribution prospects look dim, unlike other Palm Springs opening-nighters such as "Cinema Paradiso" and "Enchanted April".
In this warm look at idealistic young men, director Daniele Luchetti's surest grasp is with the inherent comic aspects of a group of fresh-faced college boys deciding to take up arms and liberate Italy before Gen. Patton and his British counterparts roll into town. The group is led by square-jawed Gigi (Stefano Accorsi), who fancies the romantic aspects of going off to war, especially when the women wave their handkerchiefs and bat their eyes. The story strikes best in its droll sensibility as the filmmakers gently lampoon the idealism of the young, self-declared soldiers. Their idea of boot camp is not training for the rigors of hand-to-hand combat but debating the pros and cons of fascism and formulating intellectual constructs to justify their taking up arms.
These early preparation scenes are quite funny, a credit to the squadron of screenwriters (Luchetti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Domenico Starnone), but like the gaggle of schoolboy soldiers, the scripting seems a participatory democracy so unfocused and lacking in thematic substructure that the story digresses to a mountain-trek, travelogue level. In short, the narrative seems impaired by the same drawback the boy soldiers have -- no particular plan or focus. After a while, speechmaking by the scholarly soldiers, often callow and simplistic, wears thin, even in its comic dimensions.
In this post-"Saving Private Ryan" age, the battle scenes seem woefully stylized and, hence, false. Still, there's much to praise, especially Luchetti's warmly comic nurturing of the action. Unfortunately, he's leading his team in largely unmapped terrain thanks to the meandering script, and "The Little Teachers" ultimately grades as a minor disappointment despite atmospheric lensing from cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci. Indicative of the narrative's atonality, composer Dario Lucantoni's delightfully bouncy score rings true when the film is smiling at the boys' idealism but is intrusively upbeat during the battle sequences.
As the self-styled leader of the pack, Accorsi (with Stallone-like forehead and jaw) is a solid lead and well epitomizes the ambivalence of young men whose rhetoric outflanks their bravery.
THE LITTLE TEACHERS
Cecchi Gori Group
Producers: Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Rita Cecchi Gori
Director: Daniele Luchetti
Screenwriters: Daniele Luchetti, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli, Domenico Starnone
Director of photography: Giuseppe Lanci
Editor: Patrizio Marone
Music: Dario Lucantoni
Color/stereo
Cast:
Gigi: Stefano Accorsi
Simonetta: Stefania Montorsi
Nello: Manuel Donato
Running time -- 122 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/11/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A dreamy think piece told in a turgid, painterly style, "Il Principe di Homburg" (The Prince of Homburg) is a muddled attempt to dramatize the duality of governance: Is order best maintained through rigid militaristic means or is it better served through adherence to the heart?
While its ambition is great, this Competition entry is so aesthetically stiff and weighted down by its intellectualizing that it seems like a dusty professorial lecture by someone who has not revised his notes in years. Alas, this "Prince" is unlikely to travel beyond its Italian distribution borders.
Darkly luminous and drenched in Germanic gothic (moons, chiaroscuro lighting, mists), the film centers around the prince of Homburg Andrea Di Stefano), commander of the German cavalry during the Thirty Year War against the Swedes. The prince, unfortunately, suffers from a curious somnambulism, often prowling the gardens at night and acting distracted during important battle plannings. Today we might deem him "disassociative."
In one of his more stupefied moments, the prince leads his charges into battle two minutes before the critical order. Alas, his mania wins the day for the Germans, completely surprising the enemy. Not surprisingly, his commanding officer (Toni Bertorelli) is an arrogant prig and orders him court-martialed, wherein the prince is promptly sentenced to death. In essence, the irony is that the prince behaves most honorably when he is under one of his spells.
More resembling a political-psychological discourse than a flesh-and-blood drama, the film soon dissipates into a series of talking-heads scenes as respective mouthpieces debate such questions as which is more real, the subconscious or the conscious, and what is the best way to govern, through the heart or the intellect.
Technical credits are well-executed, however: Praise to cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci for his richly dark lighting and to production designer Giantito Burchiellaro for his dense drapings. On the minus side, composer Carlo Crivelli's score is ponderous and overwrought, like this film.
IL PRINCIPE DI HOMBURG
In Competition
Film Albatros
in Collaboration with
Rai-Radiotelevisione Italiana
Screenwriter-director Marco Bellocchio
Director of photography Giuseppe Lanci
Music Carlo Crivelli
Production designer Giantito Burchiellaro
Editor Francesca Calvelli
Cast:
Il Principe Di Homburg Andrea Di Stefano
Natalia Barbora Bobulova
Ellettore Toni Bertorelli
Elettrice Anita Laurenzi
Hohenzollern Fabio Camilli
Golz Gianluigi Fogacci
DorflingItalo Dall'Orto
Running time -- 89 minutes
No MPAA rating...
While its ambition is great, this Competition entry is so aesthetically stiff and weighted down by its intellectualizing that it seems like a dusty professorial lecture by someone who has not revised his notes in years. Alas, this "Prince" is unlikely to travel beyond its Italian distribution borders.
Darkly luminous and drenched in Germanic gothic (moons, chiaroscuro lighting, mists), the film centers around the prince of Homburg Andrea Di Stefano), commander of the German cavalry during the Thirty Year War against the Swedes. The prince, unfortunately, suffers from a curious somnambulism, often prowling the gardens at night and acting distracted during important battle plannings. Today we might deem him "disassociative."
In one of his more stupefied moments, the prince leads his charges into battle two minutes before the critical order. Alas, his mania wins the day for the Germans, completely surprising the enemy. Not surprisingly, his commanding officer (Toni Bertorelli) is an arrogant prig and orders him court-martialed, wherein the prince is promptly sentenced to death. In essence, the irony is that the prince behaves most honorably when he is under one of his spells.
More resembling a political-psychological discourse than a flesh-and-blood drama, the film soon dissipates into a series of talking-heads scenes as respective mouthpieces debate such questions as which is more real, the subconscious or the conscious, and what is the best way to govern, through the heart or the intellect.
Technical credits are well-executed, however: Praise to cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci for his richly dark lighting and to production designer Giantito Burchiellaro for his dense drapings. On the minus side, composer Carlo Crivelli's score is ponderous and overwrought, like this film.
IL PRINCIPE DI HOMBURG
In Competition
Film Albatros
in Collaboration with
Rai-Radiotelevisione Italiana
Screenwriter-director Marco Bellocchio
Director of photography Giuseppe Lanci
Music Carlo Crivelli
Production designer Giantito Burchiellaro
Editor Francesca Calvelli
Cast:
Il Principe Di Homburg Andrea Di Stefano
Natalia Barbora Bobulova
Ellettore Toni Bertorelli
Elettrice Anita Laurenzi
Hohenzollern Fabio Camilli
Golz Gianluigi Fogacci
DorflingItalo Dall'Orto
Running time -- 89 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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